


Static

by robotsarcasm



Category: Original Work
Genre: Post-Apocalypse, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7806559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsarcasm/pseuds/robotsarcasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lonely traveler finds a glimpse of something long forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Static

Her head was full of static and her eyes burned like the sun.

For three days now, she had walked along the tattered, broken remnants of the ancient highway. The folk at the last village had warned her that the road ahead was not an easy one, but she had been on her own for years now, and what was one more isolated strip of desolation to her? So she had loaded her pack with what she could trade for, taken what water she could earn with odd jobs and exchanged favors, said a fond farewell to the few friends (and lover) she had made in her month there, and continued her trek through the mountains.

The first day of the walk had been the worst, as the dilapidated road twisted and sloped in unpredictable ways up and down the face of the mountain, and the surface cracked and split beneath her feet. The incline was so severe in places she found herself leaving the highway in hopes of being able to more easily climb up sheer rock faces. Near the end of the day's exertion, she found herself on the shores of a shriveled, foul-smelling pond that looked to have once been a much more impressive lake.

She kept walking. Something there smelled _wrong_ \- not just with the stench of tepid, scum-ridden water, but with the smell of death and decay. Once, this place had been a charnel house, and she knew to her core that sleeping there would tempt the wrong kind of attention.

After night fell, she found refuge in a cluster of abandoned buildings. Vines had overgrown most of the outsides, and the concrete had begun to crumble under nature's less-than-gentle attention, but they were intact enough for her needs. She made her camp in the back of what looked to have been what her grandmother had called a "super market," and she smiled at the irony of how the years of neglect had left the building looking anything but super. Still, it was shelter enough from anything that may have followed her trail, and she even found an undamaged jar of honey among the detritus on the shelves.

She ate well that night, but dreamed poorly. Visions of gaunt faces and blood danced in her mind among hordes of chanting crowds and a sigil of five flaming rings.

The second day started uneventfully enough, and the road was less daunting now. After the first hour, the highway began to weave across a slow-moving river, and she was grateful for how the quiet burble of the running water broke up the oppressive silence that had surrounded her for the past day's walk. She was thankful too that this was running water - even calm as it was, and even as dirty as it was, it had none of the foul odors or aura of that once-lake from the night before.

The day's walk was calmer than the one before, the road less steep and less broken, the few trees still managing to grow along the nearby river provided shade from the increasing heat of the sun. She passed fewer buildings that day, but she welcomed the change of scenery from the broken remains of what had once been, even if all that replaced them were sun-baked rocks and piles of scree and ragged patches of pine trees.

That night she stopped as the hillsides began to give way to more ruins. In the shadowy, clouded distance she could see the light of the sunset glinting off the imposing height of ancient towers of glass and steel. She knew that in the hearts of what had once been the great cities she could sometimes find people, and even a day out from her last sight of another person she was beginning to feel the pang of isolation from sleeping alone, but she also knew that the people that lived in the shattered hulks of cities were rarely the kind to welcome a weary traveler with open arms. If she had to deal with hostility, she wanted to face it as rested as she could. So she camped in the gutted hulk of a "restaurant," somehow comforted by the sign of golden arches stamped everywhere. It felt like a sign of welcoming.

Again, she slept poorly. This night's dreams were of spinning wheels of blood and blackness, of lust and avarice personified. There were sparks and shining, searing lights, and a man somehow made of light, and always the sound of rattling bones.

This day, the third day, had started more ominously. She had been startled awake by the crash of collapsing metal, and upon scrambling to her feet she found that some of the rusted apparatus in the building's kitchen had collapsed in on itself, leaving a pile of scrap and the twisted corpse of what may have been either a very small raccoon or a very large rat.

She avoided the center of the city. Her dreams from the night before still rattled around in her head, and she knew to her core that she did not want to meet anyone who lived in this place. And so she walked the long way around, using the glinting spires of the center of the city to navigate by until she made her way back to the old highway and the ancient towers were safely at her back. The river was her traveling companion again, and she was grateful for the calming noise and the shade it provided.

This day's road was harder. The very air began to dry out, and she could see the land turn more blasted and grey as she walked on. What few trees grew along the river soon gave way to stunted, pathetic bushes, and then nothing at all.

Her head began to hurt at midday with a slowly building pressure. It was the kind of headache that made active thoughts slide away unless she made a conscious effort to focus on them. Her skull throbbed in time with her steady footsteps.

The sun beat down harder. Mountain rocks began to give way to true desert. Still she walked on.

Static. Her head was full of static. The ruined city was lost behind the horizon now but the sun had taken its place at her back, glinting through the sparse cloud cover with an angry crimson light that burned her eyes whenever she glanced over her shoulder. She had to keep walking. She would keep walking until she found shelter for the night.

The road curved, and in the fading twilight she saw a structure ahead, the first one in hours. She quickened her pace, wincing as the static in her head beat harder. She would get inside the structure and rest, just for a minute, before refilling her water bottles from the river. She just needed to get inside.

The structure was similar to ones she had seen before. It was a way station of some kind, with a single building surrounded by an open paved lot, presumably for vehicles. The building had, unfortunately, collapsed at some point, and provided little shelter, but at this point she was too exhausted and distracted to care. If she was forced to expend valuable resources protecting herself this night, well, that's just what she would have to do, but at least she would not have to sleep completely in the open.

As she stepped from the paved lot to the raised ground around the building, the static in her head _shifted_. What had been a steady pulse now became a relentless pressure that she could feel not just in her head, but in her very limbs. It took almost every bit of strength and focus she had to push forward another step.

Then the world around her shifted, and the pressure in her mind was gone. Where before it had been twilight, where the land around her had been grey and dusty and nothing but rocks and the occasional patch of short-lived scrub brush, now things were, at least by comparison, thriving. It was midday, the sky was a brilliant bright blue, and she stood among a small grove of trees. The ground wasn't lush with life, but the soil looked healthy and rich. The building ahead of her was intact and clean.

And there were _people_. So many people. Children and adults and even the elderly. As many as had lived in the village she had last been in. Their clothes were more colors than she had ever seen on people before. The children ran and shouted and some of the adults looked on with fondness while others shouted in consternation. Some sat at bench-like tables, eating and drinking, while others got in and out of vehicles.

For a moment, she stood, staring in wonder at the vibrance around her.

Then it was gone as suddenly as it had come. She was alone, the way station desolate around her, the very life of the place drained away. Her headache, mercifully, had gone with the vision.

She smiled. In her years of walking the roads she had seen wonderful and horrifying things. She had certainly seen the unexplainable, the mystical, the unreal. But she had never been given a glimpse what could only have been the world that had come before. The world of her grandmother. The world that had crumbled to dust.

She made her camp in the ruins of the way station that night, calmer than she had been even in the warm arms of her lover back in the village. Nothing would dare disturb her here. This place was stamped with a timelessness that she did not entirely understand, but she knew that while she stayed, she would be safe.

Tomorrow's road would be a different story, but that was alright. Every road had its dangers, but if it led to something half as wonderful as what she had seen at the way station, it would be worth the risk.


End file.
